Body Image in Society

Go Against the GrainRemodel your nose, show your chest, and bend over for the camera. This is basically the message society is sending to women today. If you conform to the world’s idea of what a woman should look like then you will be accepted. In the two articles “The Pitfalls of Plastic Surgery” by Camille Paglia and “The Beauty Myth” by Naomi Wolf, the way women have responded to the message from society is discussed from both perspectives. Wolf is clearly against women's confinement to societal pressures. She reveals that there is a "secret underlie poisoning our freedom," referring to the way women focus on appearance and fitting in (Wolf 10). Paglia's argument focuses on the extent of women using plastic surgery to become what they believe society wants them to be. She writes about the way women have made themselves their own "works of art," taking plastic surgery to higher levels in the industry. Wolf emphasizes the way women have changed their values over the years. She makes an emotional appeal by concluding that the "contemporary ravages" are "destroying women physically and depleting us psychologically"(Wolf 19). Over time, society has influenced women to confine themselves to what the world believes is beauty instead of embracing the power of being a woman and focusing on their place in the economy. The first image portrays a woman who is perfectly proportioned yet still uncomfortable with her body. The woman in the ad has her hands behind her back as if she’s nervous about people seeing her in the bikini she’s wearing. The light blue color of the background symbolizes renewal instead of the sadness that would be portrayed from a darker blue; losing weight creates a brighter future. The bend in her leg reveals her shyness as she looks towards the weight loss product, feeling like she has to use it in order to be confident. The fact that she isn’t comfortable after she has lost 25...

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BodyImage in Today’s Society
West Shore Community College
Abstract
This paper looks at they way bodyimage affects women’s lives, caused by the media. Women in today’s society always want to change the way they look. This paper looks at different ways the media affects these women. Like through everyday exposure, and so on. Then it talks about the way women perceive themselves can affect their relationships, and sexual relations. It then goes on to talk about how women want to become a size zero like they see all these models are. But they are only a size eight. Well they go on these fad diets that are only short-term weight loss goals, and many of these diets don’t work. Also women spend billions on makeup in their lifetime just to alter the way the look to look “beautiful.” They want to look the way society thinks they need to.
BodyImage in Today’s Society
You’re fat. You’re ugly. You’re not good enough.
That statement society hears, or thinks day in, and day out. That feeling of seeing so much go on in the media, in your family, in yourself. Feeling like you have to be better than what you already are. Seeing media distort your image of what’s beautiful, relationships depends on what is thought about what people look like, women try...

...﻿Womens Bodyimage in our society
You need a hook at the start
What is the perfect body?
This is up for the media to decide as for centuries it has brainwashed, manipulated and demeaned our society with what it thinks is “perfect”. Instead of embracing our diversity when it comes to body types our media focuses on the image it seems best fit to further influence our already vulnerable minds to strive and obtain an image that no matter what extreme measures we take is ultimately unattainable with the help of photo manipulation being the fore front of what we now believe is beautiful. This huge social issue wouldn’t be so poisonous or significant without media and its need to broadcast both directly and indirectly what we should look like and be. In this speech I will discuss the history of media and its changing portrayal of the “perfect” body, how and by what means are we affected by its constant bombarding of its view on bodyimage and also how it is shaping our society as whole and why we need to change it from doing so.
Ladies and gentlemen please look at the variety of photo’s on the projector. These photos’ screams irony and how our media has changed over time. What was once desired before is now what is shunned upon and vice versa. This proves to us that not only the “perfect”...

...the changes in society and things and people being idolized, teens feel pressured to be something they are not and develop negative bodyimage.
From a young age, people begin to pay more attention to how they picture themselves and how they think others see them. Some develop positive bodyimage, but others develop negative bodyimage. It is estimated that millions more struggle with depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem tied to dissatisfaction with bodyimage (“BodyImage &amp; The Media” 1). According to Fitzhugh, some contributions to negative bodyimage may be being neglected or abused during childhood, being around people who judge others only by the way they look, and being teased about appearance as a child or teenager (6). Another contribution to negative bodyimage is the media. The media plays a hugh role to the way people view themselves. It influences the decisions a person makes in an average day and affects the environment as well.
Bodyimage is more than just physical appearance or how attractive you look (Fitzhugh 4). Fitzhugh states that it can be complex and includes physical sensations from the body, your emotions, and your thoughts (4). It is how one sees them self when they...

...﻿ Anirudh 1
People have a different idea of the perfect bodyimage, this is greatly influenced by society and the media. Emotions with which we perceive our body are an essential part of bodyimage. Social expectations of color and general beliefs related to the ideal bodyimage create issues and/or cause harm to a great number of people with low self-esteem and try to follow the standards set by the media and society to fit it. They subject themselves to gruelling, and unrealistic work-outs and diets which affect their health. The mixture of what you perceive and how you relate to it ranges from positive to negative. Depends on what you are being exposed to or exposing yourself to. Most of us form a perfect bodyimage based on a lot of television, movies, models and magazines. People with a positive bodyimage, are generally satisfied with what they see. Likewise, people who are dissatisfied with how they look at their body, have a negative bodyimage. The study related to the bodyimage has garnered great amounts of interest in the last 50 years with a monumental gain in the last 20. This being a common phenomenon in science and usually is happens when new means of measuring phenomenon are discovered. (Pruzinsky...

...cut it they have to be perfect. In our minds every one of us has an idealized bodyimage which comes from “a mixture of ideas and feeling about one’s physical appearance…linked to self esteem and emotional stability” (Maggie 2). Factors that influence ones self- perceptions are the 21st century media, peers, and family basically our main social surroundings.
All these factors influence us whether we know it or now, so it’s only natural for girls to look up to super models, film stars, and athletes. Wanting to be just like them, dressing like them, buying what they do and overall looking perfectly flawless just like them. Even though it’s important for some occupations to have the perfect bodyimage like models, athletes and movie stars, it’s virtually impossible for an average person to have a perfect bodyimage because of psychological issues and physical problems such as anorexia nervosa (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN).
The Media is responsible for the negative effects on men and women who are influenced by unrealistic images, which include perfect skin, pulp lips, breasts, hips and a slim waist and for men idly, a lean and muscular physique. An individual is exposed to many different types of perfect images once this occurs, he/she starts comparing themselves with these images. In other words this comparison starts a self...

...﻿BodyImage Satisfaction in Women: The Effects of Traditional
Women’s Magazines vs. Online/E-reader Women’s Magazines
A negative perception of body satisfaction in women has become a socially accepted occurrence in how women view their body. Devaraj and Lewis (2010) explain in their study that bodyimage can be defined as a person’s perception of how his or her physical body appears to him or her, including their feelings and attitudes towards their body (p. 103). There are sociocultural pressures for women to be thin, and when this cultural expectation cannot be met, a level of decreased body satisfaction is then internalized. In Western society there is discontent with bodyimage in women that has been described as “normative” (McLaren & Kuh, 2004; Rodin, Silberstein, & Striegel-Moore, 1984; Tiggemann & Lynch, 2001; Devaraj & Lewis, 2010 p. 103). Women in Western cultures tend to focus on the thin ideal, or the preference for a lower weight, even if that means having a lower Body Mass Index (BMI) than what is considered a healthy average (Ferguson, Munoz, Contreras & Velasquez, 2011 p. 459). The greatest influences for body satisfaction in women in Western cultures have been observed to be motivated through media sources.
There have been a multitude of studies completed...

...values and views on different topics but must respect others’ opinions and have an open mind. Our society is lacking tolerance in many ways but one way is how society expects women to be perfect and live up to the media’s expectations. Women attempt to dress and look like celebrities to stay “in-style”. Women also may mimic actions of celebrities or have cosmetic surgery to look similar to them. The portrayal of women in the media is affecting women around the world to become someone who they are not due to society’s beliefs of what beautiful is due to the medias portrayal.
Portrayal of women in the media is that women are expected to look like celebrities, or dress a certain way to be successful in life. The female boy is used as a scale towards success; women believe that in order to be successful they must look like a success. For example, models use their body in magazines to gain popularity and money in order to succeed. The media also empowers women based on their appearance. Women are portrayed to be used as sex icons and are rewarded for it in the media with popularity and money. “The female characters often depicted in film and television cast gender stereotypes and the likelihood of women, specifically young women, to be hyper sexualized in film is far more expected than men”.(Women are Portrayed as sex icons in the media showing a massive gender imbalance).The female body is glorified in the eyes of...

...The media negatively influences bodyimage for women in American society.
“Many women in the United States pressure themselves to look like females from magazine editorials but fail to realize that these women whom they have grown to envy don’t actually exist.”
According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, up to 24 million people of all ages and genders suffer from an eating disorder in the U.S and almost 50% of these people meet the criteria for depression. One of the main causes stem from cultural pressures of living in the United States, where bodyimage proves to be of great importance to many American citizens. Bodyimage has always been an issue among Americans and whether it is negative or positive, it has been shaped by numerous factors. One of the most common factors is the media, which can heavily influence one’s perception of the ideal body in a variety of ways. The media helps to promote the cultural drive to thinness. “It is nearly impossible to open a newspaper or magazine, listen to the radio, shop at a mall or turn on a TV without being confronted with the message that to be fat is to be undesirable” states Rader Programs. In fact, one quarter of all television commercials convey a message related to attractiveness. There have also been studies that prove that music videos featuring thin women resulted...